BIOLOGY - Caitlin Kowalski is a postdoctoral fellow in the UO’s Barber Lab, led by biology professor Matt Barber, which investigates the evolution of host-microbe interactions. Her award from the Helen Hay Whitney Foundation is the first of its kind to a UO researcher, according to university records, and will fund her research around yeast-bacteria interactions for the next three years, beginning in April.

PSYCHOLOGY - Wordle, the wildly popular five-word guessing game, has been called “genius” and “the pandemic game we didn’t know we needed,” but don’t count on it to improve your brain power a UO psychology professor says.

BIOLOGY, NEUROSCIENCE - Nerves in the intestines help regulate the gut’s acidity, new research shows, and that helps keep their bacterial communities in balance.

PHYSICS - Two assistant professors of physics at the University of Oregon have landed prized National Science Foundation research grants, funding their projects for the next four years. Ben Farr and Jayson Paulose have been awarded $400,000 and $593,407, respectively, in grants from the NSF’s Faculty Early Career Development Program.

BIOLOGY, CHEMISTRY & BIOCHEMISTRY - Here at the UO, many women on campus are doing innovative research while also working to make the sciences better for everyone.

MATHEMATICS - The UO Department of Mathematics garnered a $2.3 million grant from the National Science Foundation for projects that train and mentor the next generation of mathematicians in Oregon.

BIOLOGY - Proteins on the surface of cells act as sentries — and microbes hoping to invade will evolve tricks to evade these front-line defenses. But the host cell’s proteins don’t sit back helplessly. They, too, can evolve in ways that makes it harder for microbes to get through.

BIOLOGY - Prithiviraj Fernando, MS ’93, PhD ’98 (biology), and Herve Memiaghe, a landscape architecture PhD student, use research to save elephant populations in Sri Lanka and Gabon, Africa.

BIOLOGY - Two-time winner of the prestigious Udall Scholarship and 2018 Stamps Scholar Temerity Bauer didn’t always feel at home at the University of Oregon. One of few Native students pursuing a biology degree at UO and in the Clark Honors College, she said she felt lonely during her first few weeks of her freshman year — until she attended a potluck with the Native American Student Union.

HISTORY, COMPUTER SCIENCE, RELIGIOUS STUDIES - Open Oregon Educational Resources has awarded four grants, totaling more than $101,000, to University of Oregon faculty members who proposed innovative ideas for textbook and resource solutions.

ANTHROPOLOGY, BIOLOGY, CHEMISTRY AND BIOCHEMISTRY - Four UO faculty members have been named as 2021 fellows by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, joining 564 other newly elected members whose work has distinguished them in the science community and beyond.

GEOGRAPHY - Three UO geography students have formed a new group to develop networking opportunities and spur discussion with professionals in the field.

INDIGENOUS, RACE & ETHNIC STUDIES, GEOGRAPHY - Laura Pulido, professor of Indigenous, Race and Ethnic studies and geography, has been awarded two prestigious awards for her work in the field of geography.

ENGLISH, CREATIVE WRITING - Nathan Harris graduated with a B.A. in English from the UO, and is now a New York Times best-selling author. His book, The Sweetness of Water, has been a smash hit.

PHILOSOPHY, DATA SCIENCE - A member of the University of Oregon Presidential Initiative in Data Science, Alvarado studies computers and how people use them. He recalls, in graduate school, how the emerging field of complexity science led him to observe that breakthroughs in various areas were made possible only through computer programming. He’s been grappling with technology’s role in knowledge creation ever since.